City Council lauds members of Hate Crimes Task Force

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM ALATRISTEPolice Commissioner Raymond Kelly congratulates Inspector Michael Osgood, the head of the Hate Crimes Task Force. Next to Kelly is Speaker Christine Quinn; Councilwoman Debi Rose is at right.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The City Council honored a select group of NYPD investigators for the swift arrests of four suspects in the brutal bias beating of a Mexican immigrant in Port Richmond last week.

But they are still in disagreement with police over the use of a controversial database that helped make it possible.

More than a half-dozen officers of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force worked around the clock for four days to capture 17-year-olds Tyrone Goodman and Rolston Hopson of Elm Park, William Marcano of West Brighton, and a 15-year-old wanted for beating 26-year-old Rodulfo Olmedo. The group allegedly called Olmedo "a (expletive) Mexican" and "a stupid Mexican" before hitting him with planks and robbing him of his wallet and cell phone.

"You literally wouldn't rest until the individuals who committed these horrible crimes were brought to justice," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, in respect of the arrests on the Island and in another hate-crime case in Manhattan during a ceremony before the stated meeting yesterday.

But it wasn't the officers' tenacity alone that brought results: A tip they cross-referenced with the stop-and-frisk database proved invaluable. It turned out the teen suspects had been questioned by police during a routine stop in Port Richmond months earlier, and though they were not arrested, their names were kept in the database.

It might not have happened had Ms. Quinn and other Council members had their way. They asked Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to clear the stop-and-frisk database of citizens who were not charged or convicted of a crime, contending that it violates their civil rights.

"I don't think it's something that should continue in a completely open-ended way. Because that list helped them capture those individuals does not mean they could not have captured those individuals in a timely manner had they not had that list," Ms. Quinn said.

Kelly said the database has been vital to the NYPD's crimefighting efforts.

"This is an important tool, particularly at a time when we are down 6,000 police officers from where we were in 2001," Kelly added.

The NYPD devotes more resources to hate crimes than any other police department in the country, Kelly added. Led by Inspector Michael Osgood, the officers of the Hate Crimes Task Force investigate more than 200 bias attacks every year. And the department places an emphasis on solving the crimes as quickly as possible because of the oft-elevated media attention.

"It takes manpower, it takes information, it takes all the technology that is available to us. And it all came together on this case," Kelly said.